Okay, think of the biggest weasel you’ve ever worked with. Okay, calm down. I can detect your blood boiling. Take a deep breath. Now, think of why s/he’s such a weasel. I detect another deep breath is in order here. If one quality that they lack is integrity, then you’ve already identified the second term in our CIA acronym that we’re going to discuss today – although I’ll bet many other words came to mind first.

Now I know you’re saying what in the world does integrity have to do with computers. I’m sure you must be thinking that my computer, at its worst, could never be as terrible as that *&*^% weasel. Well, when our computer systems lack integrity, the accuracy and reliability of the data stored on them is much like that weasel that you work with – unreliable. When there’s no integrity with our computer systems, unauthorized modification of data isn’t prevented. And as a result, data can end up in unintended destinations, often contaminated, corrupted and maliciously modified.

As an example, let’s say that that weasel accidentally made a mistake in a database entry and charged a customer $50,000 for a bill instead of $50… and tried to creatively blame you. Thanks to that weasel, (or too bad for you if s/he’s convincing) the data is now corrupted. The customer has now been inconvenienced by having to straighten out this error. And now your job might be on the line – but of course you’ll go into Soprano mode and prevent that from happening.

When hardware and software don’t work in a concerted effort to maintain the accuracy and reliability of data, trouble ensues. And while later on we’ll uncover ways to harden systems and educate/train users on ways to avoid such costly errors, for now, just note that integrity is critical to making sure that the correct data ends up in the correct destination.